Rideshare Companies Uber and Lyft Strongly Affect Taxi and Rental Car
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RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 1 Rideshare Companies Uber and Lyft Strongly Affect Taxi and Rental Car Industries by Zach Williams Mercy College Abstract The rideshare industry has boomed in recent years, and companies such as Uber and Lyft have disrupted both taxicab businesses and rental car companies. This study analyzes the effect of Uber and Lyft on the taxi industry and the rental car industry. The independent variables are Uber and Lyft rides per day in New York City. The dependent variables are NYC taxicab medallion prices, Hertz stock prices, and Avis stock prices. The conclusions in this study are that Uber and Lyft have caused the decrease in the value of NYC taxicab medallions, the decrease in the value of Hertz stock, and the decrease in the value of Avis stock. Keywords: Uber, Lyft, Medallions, Hertz, Avis Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 2 Introduction Uber Technologies Inc. (Uber) is a company that provides mobile device software to allow users to hire car transportation with any smartphone. Uber started in 2009 and the mobile application launched officially in San Francisco in 2011; Uber is the biggest ridesharing company in the market, and the company is in 720 cities worldwide (Uber Cities). Uber has an estimated 40 million users, and the company’s net revenue in 2016 was $6.5 Billion (Smith 2017). Uber is currently valued at more than $60 Billion by investors (Yerack 2017). Lyft is a company that offers transportation services similar to Uber, but Lyft has not yet achieved the same amount of market share. Lyft operates in approximately 300 U.S. cities (Hawkins 2017), has 4.8 million active users (Smith 2017), and is currently valued at $7.5 Billion (Yerack 2017). Ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft have disrupted the taxi and car rental industries and substantially hurt the profits of existing companies. The industry changes have not been graceful as local taxi companies have fought rideshare companies politically and legally. In fact, there have even been several reports of Uber drivers in Mexico being assaulted (Associated Press 2017). Many business commentators simply state that rideshare companies are negatively impacting the taxi and rental car industry, Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 3 but rigorous analysis of the link between rideshare company success and taxi and rental car industry challenges is less common. Furthermore, analysis to establish actual causation is rarely provided by business pundits. As such, it is timely for a study that tests the statistical significance of the relationship between the success of rideshare companies and the success of the taxi and rental car industries. Literature Review While the stunning success of rideshare companies is a new occurrence, there has been plenty of commentary on how Uber and Lyft are affecting business and personal travel, transportation industries, and the overall economy. For research relevant to this article, this Literature Review will focus on the success of rideshare companies, the decrease of value of the taxicab industry, and the decrease of value of the rental car industry. Additionally, there will be analysis on the likelihood of a causative link between increasing value in the rideshare industry and the decreasing value in the taxicab and the rental car industry. With the prevalence and convenience of smart phone usage, Uber grew very quickly in popularity. In 2016, Ron Lieber writing in the New York Times explained common frustrations with renting a car that can be alleviated with a rideshare service. Wolf Richter believes that Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 4 the popularity of ridesharing companies will continue, and he conducted research on the use of these companies for business travel; he writes, “The collapse of business travel spending on taxis and rental cars is just stunning. And there is no turning back.” (Richter 2017). One direct victim of the success of rideshare companies is the taxicab industry. The local taxicab industries in most American cities are generally structured as monopolies, and there are laws and local regulations that keep the monopoly in place. Dan Hill of Newsweek describes Uber’s entry into the market as a “shock-and-awe campaign” (Hill 2017). Hill explains that Uber pushed “the envelope with municipal and state regulators, in many places operating in gray areas or, even in some instances, blatantly disregarding local laws” (Hill 2017). The popularity of Uber and the value of the service that Uber provides has made it impossible for competitors to stop its growth, so profits in the taxicab industry have decreased. In New York City, taxicab medallions are used to enforce the local monopoly and control the supply of taxis. Theresa Agovino writes for Moneywatch and explains that “Just four years ago, the cost to purchase a New York City taxi medallion, an essential license needed to operate a yellow cab, hit $1.3 million . The price of a taxi medallion crashed to its lowest level in about a decade when one sold for $241,000 in March.” (Agovino 2017). Becky Yerack of the Chicago Tribune researched a Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 5 similar story in Chicago in 2017 and found that taxi medallions are “worth about one-sixth of what they were four years ago . .” (Yerack 2017). The taxicab industry is not the only victim of the success of rideshare services. Rental car companies have also suffered decreases in value. This may be in part due to a decrease in personal usage, but most of the literature cites significant and quantifiable decreases in business usage of rental cars in favor of ridesharing services. Wolf Richter of Wolf Street explains that in the first quarter of 2017, Uber accounted for 7% of the total business expenses, edging out Starbucks and Delta Airlines, both at 4%. In the second quarter of 2017, the expense percentage for Uber had increased to 9%. (Richter 2017). Shelly Hagan of Bloomberg news provides further support for the prevalence of business usage by reporting that Uber as a business expense increased in 2016, “while use of rental cars and other traditional ground transportation options declined . .” (Hagan 2017). Researchers not only say that the value of rideshare companies is inversely related to the value of the taxicab and rental care industries, but also point to rideshare companies as the causative factor. Becky Yerack of the Chicago Tribune goes so far as to name Uber as the cause of the decrease in the taxicab industry. “Disruption in the industry, in the form of increased competition from Uber and Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 6 other ride-sharing companies, has caused medallion values to plunge.” (Yerack 2017). Wolf Richter makes a similar argument, writing that the popularity of rideshare companies is a, “. structural shift. And it will get bigger. Rideshare companies are not only hammering taxi enterprises, they’re also hammering rental car companies in that segment of their business.” (Richter 2017) Theresa Agovino of Moneywatch explains that in San Francisco, the city where Uber made its official launch, “. Yellow Cab Cooperative, filed for bankruptcy, citing ride-hailing companies as a contributing factor to its financial woes . .” (Agovino 2017). Similarly, Polly Mosendz and Shahien Nasiripour of Bloomberg report that “The distressed taxi industry is under assault from ride-sharing service Uber Technologies Inc. and competitor Lyft Inc.” (Mosendz and Nasiripour 2017). Methodology and Design In this research, the two independent variables are Uber trips per day in New York City and Lyft trips per day in New York City. The three dependent variables are transfer price of New York City taxicab medallions, stock price of Hertz Global Holdings Inc., and stock price of Avis Budget Group Inc. Hypothesis testing is used to determine if any combination of the independent variables have statistically significant correlation with the dependent variables. The variables are Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 7 summarized in Table 1. The measurement time period of analysis is from April 2015 to May 2017. The null hypothesis in each test is that there is no correlation between the independent variable(s) and the dependent variable, and the alternative hypothesis is that there is a statistically significant correlation between the independent variable(s) and the dependent variable. The test variable is the p-value for Pearson Correlation, and the significance level is 1%. The independent variables used in this research are number of Uber trips per day in New York City and number of Lyft trips per day in New York City. Uber and Lyft trips are in direct competition with taxi rides, so using these data as independent variables is very reasonable. Additionally, the primary business model of both Hertz and Avis involves renting cars for personal and business use. Uber and Lyft are of course direct substitutes for both of these uses; therefore, it is likely that as demand for Uber and Lyft increases, demand for Hertz and Avis will decrease. In efficient markets, the decrease in demand should be reflected in the stock price of Hertz and Avis. Additionally, the independent variables are direct indications of the prevalence and usage of each company in New York City. The entirety of the services offered by Uber and Lyft is their ridesharing service, so the number of Journal of Management and Innovation, 4(1), Spring 2018 Copyright Creative Commons 3.0 RIDESHARE COMPANIES UBER AND LYFT 8 rides taken per day is an exact indicator of company activity in New York City, which is one of the largest markets in the world.